How the YouTube Money Calculator works
This tool estimates ad revenue from YouTube's standard in-stream advertising model. Advertisers pay a CPM (cost per 1,000 ad impressions); only a portion of total views actually carry a paid ad impression, since ad blockers, skipped ads, and videos with limited monetization all reduce that rate; and YouTube pays creators a fixed share of the resulting ad revenue under the YouTube Partner Program.
The formula
Gross ad revenue = (Monthly views × Monetized view rate ÷ 1,000) × CPM
Creator earnings = Gross ad revenue × Creator revenue share
Combined into a single "effective RPM" (revenue per 1,000 total views): RPM = CPM × Monetized view rate × Revenue share, so Estimated earnings = Views × RPM ÷ 1,000.
Worked example
With 500,000 monthly views, a $4.00 CPM, 50% of views monetized, and the standard 55% creator revenue share: monetized ad impressions total 250,000, gross ad revenue is $1,000.00, and creator earnings are $1,000.00 × 55% = $550.00 for the month, or $6,600.00 annualized. The effective RPM works out to $1.10 per 1,000 views — well below the $4.00 CPM, because only half of views carried a monetized impression and YouTube retained 45% of the resulting revenue.
CPM vs. RPM
CPM (cost per mille) is what an advertiser pays per 1,000 ad impressions — a demand-side price, not a creator payout. RPM (revenue per mille) is what a creator actually receives per 1,000 views, after accounting for the share of views that carry a monetized ad impression and YouTube's revenue-share cut. RPM is always lower than CPM whenever the monetized view rate or the revenue share is below 100%.
What moves the estimate most
- CPM: driven by advertiser demand for a channel's niche, audience country, device mix, and time of year (advertiser budgets typically rise toward Q4).
- Monetized view rate: the share of views that actually display a paid ad impression; reduced by ad blockers, videos with limited or no ads enabled, and regions with lower ad fill.
- Revenue share: under the YouTube Partner Program's standard terms, creators keep 55% of ad revenue from in-stream ads — a split set by YouTube's monetization policies.
What this estimate does not include
This calculator only models standard watch-page ad revenue. It does not include YouTube Premium revenue share, channel memberships, Super Chat or Super Thanks, the Shorts revenue pool (which uses a different, pooled formula), sponsorships, or affiliate income — all of which can add to a channel's total earnings but follow different payout rules.